Long wait for the return of Yemen’s sons drives a nation to extremes

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Relatives of the 90 Yemeni detainees at Guantánamo Bay protest in Sanaa for their releaseKhaled Abdullah Ali Al Mahdi/Reuters

Alice FordhamSanaa

Published at 12:01AM, July 19 2010

When Muhammad Odaini set foot on his native Yemeni soil this week, ending
seven years of detention in Guantánamo Bay, his family’s prayers were
answered.

The US sent him home after a scathing judicial ruling concluded that there was
no evidence that he had any connection to al-Qaeda. One man’s return,
however, will do little to assuage a growing bitterness in Yemen that more
than 90 of its citizens — half the prison’s population — are still in
Guantánamo.

Posters of the prisoners festoon the dusty streets of Sanaa. Mobs protest
outside the heavily fortified US Embassy. Radical clerics denounce the US